In the early years of the 21st century, computers dominate society. Everyone, from the super-rich to the barely scraping by* lives their entire life plugged into the global datanet via their veephones. Data savvy professionals can earn enormous amounts, but secure permanent jobs are a thing of the past, with people adapting to 'the plug in lifestyle,' living from short term contract to short term contract and never staying in one place long enough to make lasting relationships. Targeting your enemies with malicious computer programs (called 'worms' here) is an everyday bit of vindictiveness, and Government computers in'Canaveral' monitor every aspect of online existence. The pressure of life at this pace, and awareness of this panopticon, puts people under massive mental pressure. Physical and emotional burnout are common, and the aging survivors of the last century seethe with resentment at the lifestyles of children who have grown up in the world they created. Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley deluded utopians are funding unethical, not to say plain stupid, experiments in posthumanism to 'win the brain race.' Most of the characters live with the feeling that their lives could be turned upside down in an instant because of someone breaking into the data held on the network. They also believe that the network knows more about them than they do about themselves. This is an extension of the sense of paranoia felt by many people in the 1970s, believing themselves to be powerless in the face of political and economic forces over which they had no control. But it’s full of details—like the game of “fencing,” like an electronic form of Go. Or there are the identities he has taken: “lifestyle consultant, utopia designer, priest, data retrieval specialist”—that last is like being a systems analyst, but they didn’t have the name when the book was written. They barely had computers. But it has social networks, sort of. It has future slang that works. Every time I read it different bits of it have become relevant. (It’s wrong about “veephones” though. There’s a piece of tech we actually have and that nobody wants.) The thing that seems most painful is that the US has an overloaded health service, a bit like the Canadian health services or the NHS. It’s a dystopian world but, people do at least have healthcare and a social safety net.

Before the Net: John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider The Net Before the Net: John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider

There's far more to it than this, and though the ending wraps things up a little too neatly (I'm afraid the bad guys would almost certainly have won), this remains a brilliant net-based SF novel. My name is Nicholas Haflinger.” In a loud clear voice, capable of filling the auditorium without the aid of microphones. “You’re wondering why I’ve called you here. The reason is simple. To answer all your questions. I mean — all. This is the greatest news of our time. As of today, whatever you want to know, provided it’s in the data-net, you can now know. In other words, there are no more secrets.” That claim was so sweeping that his listeners sat briefly stunned. Long seconds slid away … Brunner extrapolated forward the drug culture of the seventies—not the pot and acid culture, the “mother’s little helper” culture, where everyone is taking tranquilizers and uppers to deal with their work. He took the trend of interchangeable suburbs and extended it out to make everywhere interchangeable because people move about so much and don’t have roots, the “plug in lifestyle.”“Bounce or break,” and a lot of them do overload and break.Brunner's hero is a young man who is bent on changing the world. He struggles to evade the officials and uses all skills available to him, whether inherent skills or technological ones, to the best of his ability, to put an end to the misuse of power that is so much a part of his world which involves the entity of the world wide datanet. I keep re-reading it, not to compare it against current tech, but because I always feel that I may be old enough to like it this time. I like most Brunner, and Stand on Zanzibar is a masterpiece. But although I continue to admire it and insist that it is a significant book, this wasn’t that time either. Oh well.

The Shockwave Rider (Literature) - TV Tropes The Shockwave Rider (Literature) - TV Tropes

Estoy generosa: a lo mejor no se merece las 5 pero ¡qué coño!, me lo he pasado estupendamente leyéndolo y ya está.K H Brunner, Henry Crosstrees Jr, Gill Hunt (with Dennis Hughes and E C Tubb), John Loxmith, Trevor Staines, Keith Woodcott Hey!” In an incredulous tone from a man beside Rose Jordan. “All kind of weird stuff has been coming off the beams since yesterday, like they’ve been paying women to bear kids that are sure to be deformed. You mean this is supposed to be true?”

The Shockwave Rider | The Rookies The Shockwave Rider | The Rookies

A rattle of agreement: from the students on principle, but from several reporters too, who looked so glum one might presume they’d encountered that kind of trouble. Abstract Strategy Game: The fictional game known as Fencing, a futuristic version of Dots and Boxes. The objective is to claim points on the board, and then create triangles that do not enclose dots owned by the opponent. The game has a hidden information aspect, as the player also claims a concealed point along with a visible point. It's claimed to be an automatic win for the first player . Quill on The Secret of the Sul’Dam: Subtle Changes to the Way the One Power Works in The Wheel of Time TV Series 1 hour ago In this world of confusion are also companies specialising in psychological intervention. One such is Anti-Trauma Inc. which is hired to "normalise" children in a process akin to deprogramming, the (often violent) attempt to force people to renounce their association with groups perceived as cults. Anti-Trauma does significant harm to its charges, although as so often happens in Brunner's interconnected society, it also spends much money and time covering up its failures.Just one example - the protagonist is in the business of creating digital worms to make changes to the net. At the time (1975), not only was ARPANet, the internet's predecessor very limited, the first actual network worm wouldn't be launched for another 13 years (Brunner originated the term in this novel). About this future America-- damn if he was not prescient! Most people live what is called a 'plug in' lifestyle, willing (and forced) to move all the time to new occupations and places; hence, most accommodations are standardized, as seem to be most personality traits. There are fringes of people who resist and resort to 'tribalism', warring among themselves for no real reason. Strange religions flare up and die; unminded by the powers that be (PTB) as they serve to provide an outlet of frustration/anger not directed at the government. Again, most people resort to some type of medication (can you say soma?) to keep themselves together. That we are a civilized species. Therefore none shall henceforth gain an illicit advantage by reason of the fact we together know more than one of us can know.